A Co-Implementation of the Projective Consciousness Model and Virtual Reality for Quantitative Studies and Prediction of Emotion: An Investigation of Emotional Responses to Stressors

Human behaviour is complex and challenging to explain. Nevertheless, I and the supervisor, Prof. David Rudrauf, believe that a big leap in explaining such complexity can be achieved with an interdisciplinary effort. In particular, the project aims at investigating the psychological mechanisms underlying human emotional responses, by choosing the responses to stressors as a case study. We will implement a recently designed quantitative and predictive framework, which integrates a computational model of embodied consciousness called the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) and virtual reality (VR). This combinatorial PCM-VR approach has been introduced by the supervisor with aiming to push the boundary of psychological studies by putting the theoretical (i.e. the PCM) and technological (i.e. VR) advancements to the best use. The hypothesis is that emotional responses to stressors are governed by the appraisal mechanisms through their influences on emotion components, and this can be modeled and predicted using the PCM-VR method. The project outcomes are a mechanistic explanation of emotional responses regulated by stressors and a validation of the PCM-VR approach. Ultimately, it can lead to implementations of the PCM-VR method for other problems, such as to reveal mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders, such as Schizophrenia.